Traceability

Metrological traceability can be understood as a chain of calibrations starting from the top level etalon
(defining the quantity), through lower level etalons up to our device or sample. We are trying to develop methods for
making all the nanoscale measurements traceable. As some of the methods described on these pages are still in
the developement and quantitative measurements are problematic with them (e.g. Scanning Near Field Optical Microscopy),
this is a long term task. On the other hand, it is practical to consider the traceability already when developing novel
analytical methods or instruments.

The easiest measurments from the point of traceability are probably dimensional ones, like using
scanning probe microscopy, namely if we use a specialised equipment [1]. As these devices are equiped by interferometers,
large part of traceability problematics reduces only on traceability of lasers used in the interferometers.

In dimensional measurements by other (non-metrology) devices the situation is much more complicated and in most of the cases we need
to develop special samples for making instruments traceable. Even more complicated is traceability in other physical quantitites
measurements, like thermal conductivity or mechanical properties [2]. We try to focus on developement of both the instrumentation
and reference samples for these purposes.